The Creation, St Paul’s Cathedral, review: 'a sense of awe'

The London Symphony Orchestra brought freshness and wonder to Haydn's Paradise
Lost-inspired oratorio, says John Allison

It's hardly surprising that Haydn went to St Paul's Cathedral early on during the first of his two long sojourns in London in the 1790s. Less predictably, he even visited Slough – surely the only composer of his stature ever to have done so – to see Herschel and his famous telescope. It was during his time in England that Haydn found inspiration for The Creation, his oratorio drawn loosely from Milton's Paradise Lost, and one of the more fanciful theories surrounding the work's gestation is that his first telescopic glimpse of the heavens might have spurred him on. We will never know, but we can be fairly sure that he never dreamt of such a piece being performed in St Paul's.

For one thing, the acoustics are all wrong, as was evident again in the first of this year's City of London Festival concerts in the cathedral. Very few major works are suited to this venue, and one can only guess how poorly the music carried to the more distant audience. Under the dome, the "Representation of Chaos" sounded even more chaotic than Haydn intended, as his adventurous harmonies smudged up against each other, and most of the words were lost. Who could tell if the singers and orchestra were always together?

Yet under the secure baton of Edward Gardner, this was in many ways an exemplary performance, entirely free of the piety that can spoil the piece and always alert instead to Haydn's marvellous pictorialism. From swirling darkness to first sunrise and the humorous orchestral depictions of nature, the London Symphony Orchestra caught all the freshness and supplied that sense of wonder essential to any successful performance.

As Gardner also showed, this is a work that breathes some of the same air as Mozart's almost contemporaneous Magic Flute. In contrast to Bach's sin-anguished Lutheran works of half a century earlier, the Catholic Haydn's music speaks with the optimism of the Enlightenment.

The London Symphony Chorus sang with power and – even more remarkably – hushed quietness. The soloists, taking the parts of the three narrating angels plus Adam and Eve, sounded a little small-scale in St Paul's yet all made their mark. The bass Neal Davies brought a sense of mystery right from his opening "In the beginning", and Sarah Tynan shone in the soprano solos. Robert Murray sang with sweet-toned refinement and evoked the first moonlight with a moving sense of awe.